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Stephen Harper’s inconsistencies on hate laws: Siddiqui

Stephen Harper chose to axe the provision against hate speech in the federal Human Rights Code, but not in the Criminal Code.

Ezra Levant of Sun News Network apologized for his on-air rant about the Roma last fall. He said he was wrong to have equated the actions of some individuals with an entire ethnic group.
(Pawel Dwulit / THE CANADIAN PRESS file photo)

But Harper is responding to his right-wing supporters who demanded that human rights commissions get out of the business of “policing speech,” as they put it. Wrapping themselves in the flag of free speech, they essentially wanted to be free to assail any minority they chose to target. The media jumped on board because they want as few restrictions as possible.

Harper, however, chose not to touch the anti-hate provision in the Criminal Code, which prescribes up to two years in jail for knowingly and wilfully instigating hate. One key question was never answered: why is it all right to imprison people for their words but not to persuade them to cease and desist, or at the most impose a fine on them?

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The presumption was that the bar for criminal prosecution is higher than under human rights codes—every charge must be approved by the attorney general of the concerned province. So the right-wingers figured they would be home free by just getting rid of Section 13.

But, in a delicious irony, they are finding out that’s not so.

Among the loudest critics of anti-hate human rights laws was Ezra Levant of Sun News Network. He mocked a group of Muslims who complained to the federal as well as three provincial human rights commissions about what they thought was a hateful tirade against all Muslims in
Maclean’s
magazine. That complaint was rejected but the campaign by Levant and Co. continued.

Last fall, Levant did an
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akzS5xm7J4M

on-air rant against the Roma. Theirs was “a culture synonymous with swindlers,” he said, while commenting on a crime ring operating in the Durham region involving some Roma.

“One of the central characteristics of that culture is that their chief economy is theft and begging ... The phrase ‘gypsy’ and ‘cheater’ have been so interchangeable historically that the word has been entered into the English language as a verb: he gypped me. Well, the gypsies have gypped us. Too many have come here as false refugees.” And so on.

Gina Csanyi-Robah of the Roma Community Centre filed complaints with the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, the Alberta Bar Association and also the hate crimes unit of the Toronto police.

The two broadcast regulatory bodies wrote to say they would await the outcome of the police probe. The bar association, of which Levant is a member, asked whether they could defer their investigation until after police had done their work, she said.

On March 11, Csanyi-Robah says police informed her that they found more than enough evidence to charge Levant under the Criminal Code, and the Crown attorney agreed. But then permission from the Ontario attorney general was not forthcoming, she says, adding that
t
wo detectives told her that was highl
y
unusual — they had never seen such a rejection.

She was called to a meeting March 14 with Patrick Monahan, deputy attorney general. The detectives and the Crown attorney were there. So was Mark Freiman, lawyer for the Roma Centre, and two of its board members.

She recalled — and another person corroborated — that Monahan said there was evidence to proceed with the charge but that it could be “a challenging case.” Told that most anti-hate cases can be challenging, he said that Levant was a bully and that he’d turn it into “a bit of circus,” she says.

“They were intimidated about what he’d come out and say on the air,” she told me.

Four days later, Levant issued a rare on-air apology. He said he was wrong to have equated the actions of some individuals with an entire ethnic group. “I must admit that I did more than just attack a crime or immigration fraud problem. I attacked a particular group, and painted them all with the same brush.”

Csanyi-Robah found the apology insincere.

She told the Globe and Mail's Steve Ladurantaye: “He said he made some inappropriate remarks. Well, hello — he made racist remarks. He compared us to the Bloods and the Crips. He said the only true Romas were tomatoes. He denied our existence as a people.”

She told me she also found it “shocking” that he apologized six months after the fact but within days of her meeting Monahan. “Someone absolutely got to him,” she said. “Everything we discussed at that meeting was in that apology.”

In a public statement Wednesday, she added: “Is his apology due to his fear of prosecution? . . . Has political interference caused another miscarriage of justice against the Romani community?”

A spokesman for Monahan refused comment, citing confidentiality.

The episode raises a question:

If Harper is taking the American route of unfettered free speech — thereby ignoring the Supreme Court — why is he still in the business of prosecuting hate speech under the Criminal Code?

NB: Today on the UN Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination,
the Roma Community Centre
is screening a documentary on anti-Roma racism, 6.30 p.m. at the Al Green Theatre, Spadina and Bloor.

Correction-- March 21, 2013: This article was edited from a previous version that did not properly attribute a quote from Gina Csanyi-Robah that was originally published in the Globe and Mail. The Star apologizes for this error.

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